The existing processes for the production of coke from coal and the varied systems used for disposal of waste plastics and paper products are totally unsatisfactory ecologically and generally non-productive with respect to the gas driven off these processes.
Coke production for steel manufacturing as practiced now involves huge machines and ovens of great length and complexity that are grossly inefficient in heat consumption and atmospheric contamination. Volumes of toxic gases escape and such ovens are being banned by regulatory agencies.
Coke is preferred by some steel makers over the use of electric ovens, but the blast furnaces are being condemned as well. The inventor believes that a suitable means for preparing coke might lead to efforts to enclose the blast furnaces so the expelled gases could be captured and used as is taught in this process and the steel making procedure might be revived.!
Great volumes of waste plastic, carpet fibre, glass, rubber tires and paper are buried, or are simply accumulating because of landfill closing and the inability of cities and counties to provide a properly approved system for disposal that conforms to ecological laws and restrictions.
The design of conventional apparati described in the prior art foretells the use of this extraction method for the processing of coal, other ores, waste plastic, tires and even petrochemical plant "tank-bottom". Ground waste glass could be used in the fusible lining of the feedstock and in some of the extruded ore feedstock forms processed. The gases accumulated will be separated by molecular weight and mass procedures to subsequently be recombined using a processing procedure that is essentially the opposite of the hot extraction process. In this process virtually the same apparatus uses cold in the recombination of the separated gases to produce products from materials reduced in the hot process.
There are coal ores in abundance throughout the world which are most frequently of low quality BTU levels and the procedure of this invention provides a means to upgrade such by the application of controlled heats to reduce water and sulfur contents. In addition the process of this invention permits the infusion of gases or chemicals to enhance features of the coal so its BTU performance can be of uniformly high quality when shipped and thereby reduce tonnage. In the processing of such enhancement the addition of certain gases to the coal and recovery of gases in the coal combined with those added can generate recoverable gas with values to offset or exceed costs associated with this enhancement procedure.